Conventionally, in a switching power supply apparatus that controls the amount of current to be fed to a load by controlling on/off of a built-in switching device, intermittent control is employed that permits switching to an intermittent switching operation having the duration for which a switching operation of the switching device is stopped in order to reduce the loss of the switching power supply apparatus at light load (see Patent Publication 1). The switching power supply apparatus performing the aforementioned intermittent control is provided with a comparator that compares a voltage commensurate with an output voltage with a reference voltage Vburst for intermittent control.
When the comparator finds the voltage commensurate with the output voltage to be higher than the reference voltage Vburst because of light load, the switching control operation of the switching device performed by a driver is stopped. Then, because of hysteresis exhibited by the comparator, when the comparator finds the output voltage to be lower, the switching control operation of the switching device performed by the driver is resumed. By repeating such an operation at light load, the intermittent control by the comparator for intermittent control is performed, whereby the efficiency of the intermittent control is increased.    Patent Publication 1: JP-A-H06-303766